On r/collapse and pissed of another rambling neoliberal ghoul by saying China cares more about it's people since it has a higher rate of home ownership among the youth and that they focus on avoiding the traps of American market speculation. In response I got this babbling paragraph of nothing burgers lmao.
"Do you have even a tiny clue as to how housing works in that market? Do you understand that the average apartment price per square foot in major cities can be over a thousand USD? Or $5-600 a square foot in Third Tier cities. Or that average income to mortgage ratios are over 100% in most cities in the country, and exceed 400% in tier one cities? Do you understand that there are many, many ghost cities containing fake housing for hundreds of thousands of occupants, in building where apartments sell for $300K USD and up? These building are often just empty shells that can never be occupied, since they don't have elevators or even stair towers. Do you understand that it's not unusual to have the government issue demolition orders for new construction mid-rise towers, as they are built so astoundingly poorly that they are in danger of collapsing, and some actually do collapse? Do you have a clue that the average urban professional clears $1100 USD/month and can't buy a place to live, under $4-500K USD within several hours of commute time to their job? Do you understand that the entire Chinese residential market is a fucking scam, that there are 65 MILLION unoccupied units, frequently purchased by extended families that have pooled every fucking dime that several generations have, to pay a down payment on an apartment, hours away? An "investment" that will never have any real value, and never be the safe haven for their money they were led to believe it is? Do you understand that the last six months have been a downward spiral in the residential market, with hundreds of billions of dollars lost, sales falling off a cliff and "values" declining at 10% year over year.
No, reality is, you don't have a tiny clue about any of this. Educate yourself and stop believing the propaganda, no matter who is pushing the lies and what country they are shilling for."
Last decade's ghost city is this decade's growing population hub. They did the same thing for a lot of the new rail systems when it was first being constructed -- "OH EM GEE, China is building subway stations in the middle of nowhere!!1!" -- and today it's a bustling thoroughfare. You could go digging and match the shock articles of yester-year to mundane city news of today... or you could reply "lol" and get the biggest response for the least effort.
I'm at the lol stage and have left it at that
The whole "ghost cities" thing was incredibly stupid for several reasons. Chief among is the fact that Not Just Bikes brought up in one of his latest videos, which is that historically cities have sprung up around transportion hubs, and not the other way around. So if you want people to move to a city / newly planned area, the first thing you have to do is to make sure that there is decent transportation options. Like it's literally the reason that we have almost every city in America west of Minnesota.
They "seed" the cities too with government offices.
Seems like an obvious way to kickstart the proces. Just kind of sucks for the people who are told to either quit or move, at least that was the big point when Denmark tried to counteract the massive centralization that has been happening since the 1970's.
Is it like that though? In Taiwan it's the younger people that don't get that many options in where they can work if it's a gov position. For example, if you're young there not might be any teaching/banking/police officer/firefighter positions in a major city. Maybe in a few years after working in a ruralish area a position will open up in a big city.
I can't speak for the people of Taiwan, since they have a completely different social climate and history compared to my own little slice of scandinavia. Our right-wing liberal party tried their hand at neoliberal economic planning, and it mostly just annoyed people. Turns out you can't really "provide tax incentives" to reserve the natural trend of monopolisation and centralization inherent in our current state of capitalism.
By almost every city you mean like 3 or 4 at most?